Lena Dunham Has Quit Twitter Due To Bullying, Apologizes For Domestic Violence Analogy

The Girls star/creator announced that she had bowed out of using Twitter, and now lets someone else post to the social media site for her. Her decision was revealed on Kara Swisher’s “Re/code Decode” podcast on Tuesday, September 29, while she was promoting her newsletter publication Lenny. She also explained that she had stopped reading the media gossip site Gawker and feminist blog Jezebel due to the same reasons.

“I don’t look at Twitter anymore. I tweet, but I do it through someone else,” she told Swisher, adding that she doesn’t even know what her account password is. “I really appreciate that anybody follows me at all, and so I didn’t want to cut off my relationship to it completely, but it really, truly wasn’t a safe space for me.”

Lena Dunham said she could no longer handle the body-shaming comments she received from social media users, specifically over a recent Instagram picture she posted that showed her in a white sports bra and her boyfriend Jack Antonoff’s boxers. She’s seen in the photo standing in her bathroom, staring into the camera, wearing nothing else but a pink watch.

“It wasn’t a graphic picture,” said Dunham. “I was wearing men’s boxers, and it turned into the most rabid, disgusting debate about women’s bodies, and my Instagram page was somehow the hub for misogynists for the afternoon.”

“Even if you think, like, ‘Oh I can read, like, 10 mentions that say I should be stoned to death and kind of, like, laugh and move on,’ that’s verbal abuse,” she added, noting that she is still active on Instagram. “Those aren’t words that should be directed at you ever. And so, for me personally, it was safer to stop [using Twitter].”

Lena also discussed the websites Gawker and Jezebel, comparing their articles about her to domestic violence one might face with an abusive ex-husband.

“I used to read Gawker and Jezebel in college and be like, ‘I can’t wait to get to New York where my people will be to welcome me.’ And it’s like, it’s literally, if I read it, it’s like going back to a husband who beat me in the face — it just doesn’t make any sense.”

Later on Tuesday night, Dunham issued an apology on Instagram for her earlier analogy, saying that she was in no way trying to make light of something as serious as domestic violence. She said she was simply trying to show just how harsh people on the Internet can be, and by doing so, she may have sounded as though she was making a joke about the issue.

“When I heard my own quote I was like “Jesus, Lena, no.” I wasn’t making a joke about domestic violence–I was over emphatic in my attempt to capture how damaging the Internet can be (not just to celebrities),” she captioned a photo that simply read “sorry.”

“I regret that earlier comparison because it doesn’t accurately describe the condition of being attacked online AND it appears to make light of domestic violence, which ain’t my style,” she added.

Girls returns for its fifth season in January 2016.

What do you think about Lena Dunham’s decision to quit using Twitter? Do you think her analogy about domestic violence was crossing the line? Leave your comments below.